Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson served as president of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002. She now leads a foundation devoted to climate justice.

Why you should listen

Mary Robinson is president of the Mary Robinson Foundation: Climate Justice, and the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change. She was the president of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002, and is now a member of The Elders and the Club of Madrid. She is also a member of the Lead Group of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement. In 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama, and between March 2013 and August 2014 she served as the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa.

A former president of the International Commission of Jurists and former chair of the Council of Women World Leaders, Robinson was founder and president of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, from 2002 to 2010. Robinson’s memoir, Everybody Matters, was published in 2012.

More news and ideas from Mary Robinson

The TED community is busy with new projects and ideas: below, some highlights. A new galaxy cluster hidden in plain sight. Researchers at MIT, including TED speaker Henry Lin, have recently discovered a cluster of hundreds of galaxies obscured by an intensely active supermassive black hole at its center. That extra-bright black hole, named PKS1353-341, […]

Two years ago, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson graced the TEDWomen stage with a moving talk about why climate change is not only a threat to our environment, but also a threat to the human rights of many poor and marginalized people around the world. Mary is an incredible person who inspires me greatly. […]

Pat Mitchell, curator of TEDWomen, shares this report with the TED Blog: In April, I had the privilege of moderating a discussion at the Skoll World Forum on the subject of “Leading Through Adversity.” My panel consisted of four powerful women: Mary Robinson, Ireland’s first female president (watch Mary Robinson’s TED Talk); Halla Tómasadóttir, a good […]